A Pluralistic Universe | Page 2

by static concepts, 233. Conceptual treatment is nevertheless of immense practical use, 235. The traditional rationalism gives an essentially static universe, 237. Intolerableness of the intellectualist view, 240. No rationalist account is possible of action, change, or immediate life, 244. The function of concepts is practical rather than theoretical, 247. Bergson remands us to intuition or sensational experience for the understanding of how life makes itself go, 252. What Bergson means by this, 255. Manyness in oneness must be admitted, 256. What really exists is not things made, but things in the making, 263. Bergson's originality, 264. Impotence of intellectualist logic to define a universe where change is continuous, 267. Livingly, things are their own others, so that there is a sense in which Hegel's logic is true, 270.
LECTURE VII
THE CONTINUITY OF EXPERIENCE 275
Green's critique of Sensationalism, 278. Relations are as immediately felt as terms are, 280. The union of things is given in the immediate flux, not in any conceptual reason that overcomes the flux's aboriginal incoherence, 282. The minima of experience as vehicles of continuity, 284. Fallacy of the objections to self-compounding, 286. The concrete units of experience are 'their own others,' 287. Reality is confluent from next to next, 290. Intellectualism must be sincerely renounced, 291. The Absolute is only an hypothesis, 292. Fechner's God is not the Absolute, 298. The Absolute solves no intellectualist difficulty, 296. Does superhuman consciousness probably exist? 298.
LECTURE VIII
CONCLUSIONS 301
Specifically religious experiences occur, 303. Their nature, 304. They corroborate the notion of a larger life of which we are a part, 308. This life must be finite if we are to escape the paradoxes of monism, 310. God as a finite being, 311. Empiricism is a better ally than rationalism, of religion, 313. Empirical proofs of larger mind may open the door to superstitions, 315. But this objection should not be deemed fatal, 316. Our beliefs form parts of reality, 317. In pluralistic empiricism our relation to God remains least foreign, 318. The word 'rationality' had better be replaced by the word 'intimacy,' 319. Monism and pluralism distinguished and defined, 321. Pluralism involves indeterminism, 324. All men use the 'faith-ladder' in reaching their decision, 328. Conclusion, 330.
NOTES 333
APPENDICES
A. THE THING AND ITS RELATIONS 847
B. THE EXPERIENCE OF ACTIVITY 870
C. ON THE NOTION OF REALITY AS CHANGING 895
INDEX 401

LECTURE I
THE TYPES OF PHILOSOPHIC THINKING
As these lectures are meant to be public, and so few, I have assumed all very special problems to be excluded, and some topic of general interest required. Fortunately, our age seems to be growing philosophical again--still in the ashes live the wonted fires. Oxford, long the seed-bed, for the english world, of the idealism inspired by Kant and Hegel, has recently become the nursery of a very different way of thinking. Even non-philosophers have begun to take an interest in a controversy over what is known as pluralism or humanism. It looks a little as if the ancient english empirism, so long put out of fashion here by nobler sounding germanic formulas, might be repluming itself and getting ready for a stronger flight than ever. It looks as if foundations were being sounded and examined afresh.
Individuality outruns all classification, yet we insist on classifying every one we meet under some general head. As these heads usually suggest prejudicial associations to some hearer or other, the life of philosophy largely consists of resentments at the classing, and complaints of being misunderstood. But there are signs of clearing up, and, on the whole, less acrimony in discussion, for which both Oxford and Harvard are partly to be thanked. As I look back into the sixties, Mill, Bain, and Hamilton were the only official philosophers in Britain. Spencer, Martineau, and Hodgson were just beginning. In France, the pupils of Cousin were delving into history only, and Renouvier alone had an original system. In Germany, the hegelian impetus had spent itself, and, apart from historical scholarship, nothing but the materialistic controversy remained, with such men as Büchner and Ulrici as its champions. Lotze and Fechner were the sole original thinkers, and Fechner was not a professional philosopher at all.
The general impression made was of crude issues and oppositions, of small subtlety and of a widely spread ignorance. Amateurishness was rampant. Samuel Bailey's 'letters on the philosophy of the human mind,' published in 1855, are one of the ablest expressions of english associationism, and a book of real power. Yet hear how he writes of Kant: 'No one, after reading the extracts, etc., can be surprised to hear of a declaration by men of eminent abilities, that, after years of study, they had not succeeded in gathering one clear idea from the speculations of Kant. I should have been almost surprised if they had. In or about 1818, Lord Grenville, when visiting the Lakes